Is this the state of our bureaucracy ???
Quote
"The AEC has been busy. Some 11 million ballot papers were counted by around 75,000 polling officials at more than 7000 polling places after 6pm on election day.
From Tuesday to Friday the AEC verified and counted more than 1.2 million postal votes. That's continuing with officials now working through more than a million declaration votes."
So 75,000 polling officials have counted 11 million votes .... By my calculations that's 146.66 votes per official
146.66 ballot papers per official counted in ONE WHOLE WEEK.
Is the AEC on a go slow or what ?
I had to go to a counting centre the other day, it looks like the AEC put a bit of emphasis on employing minorities and those that would normally struggle to get a job, through a disability or otherwise. Plus 146 of those stupid white ballot papers, counted, collated and checked two or three times over per person, in reality the actual counters are probably only half the staff. Once you take out the management team, scrutineers, runners and other staff, all of a sudden the counters are probably counting a thousand or more ballot papers each, which isn't a bad effort if you're in a wheel chair. Not to mention the logistical nightmare of pulling it off only once every three years.
And the good thing is we do it right in Australia to avoid complaints of rigging, the resultant riot and so on.
I'd rather they take a week to do 146 papers each and triple check, than what we see in 3rd world nations.
Plus, most AEC types are employed for a few hrs from Sat to Mon when we have an election.....not for the whole week. That 75000 probably dropped to a couple of thousand (?) by Tuesday.
A coin toss would have been quicker.
Hey Bill you toss I'll call.
Heads I win. Tails you lose
I'm averaging about 5,000 house of reps tickets a day. Take into account the extra processing and transport of absentee votes, postal votes, pre-poll votes. All votes need to be double counted and sealed before they leave one location, and then double counted when they arrive somewhere else. (First time for me, apparently it's a more stringent protocol since all those senate votes went missing last time in WA).
If you're out by more than 1 or 2 in 5,000, then you need to find out why. They go to extraordinary lengths to account for every single stub that is left from the voting paper dockets. It's impressive (and time consuming!)
Don't get me started on sorting preferences for the monstrous senate paper! 
